because human nature rejects it. You will find no one practising it except in secret or with the support of someone influential. Its practitioners bear the same humiliation, abasement, and darkened faces as those guilty of fabrication, lying, and deception. As Allah Most High says:

“Indeed, those who took the calf for worship will incur wrath from their Lord and humiliation in the life of this world. Thus do We recompense those who invent falsehood.”

Abū Qilāba said: “This applies to everyone in this community who invents falsehood, until the Day of Resurrection.” These people engage in fabrication, fraud, and deception in religion, and both are among those who invent falsehood.

As for the ancients, they stated that artifice cannot accomplish what nature does, and explained that what is manufactured cannot be like what is naturally produced. Thus, when their authors gave a precise account of alchemy, they would say: “Since its sole purpose is imitation, the way to achieve that imitation is such and such.”

They therefore follow methods that produce this imitation. Yet despite the variety and abundance of these methods, and despite the many groups who have mastered them and agree about them, they remain difficult for most people and fraught with pitfalls. Those who fall short outnumber many times over those who succeed, numerous though the latter are. The vast majority of those who pursue alchemy never attain even the manufactured product, which is adulterated, spurious by nature, and forbidden by Islamic law. Rather, they pursue and yearn for what is false and forbidden, exchange stories about it, study books devoted to it, and recite poetry about it, yet never attain the actual product of alchemy—which is adulterated material. They are like the followers of the awaited one who is in the cellar, and the followers of the men of the unseen, who are not seen